*for J. L. C.* No matter how many times I came back to that valley floor I felt its gravity as not a weight on the flesh or a shadow across the mind but an ache at the heart. As the horizon sank below the mountains the sun above could not console me. All its light revealed I knew to be the world—every crag and rift the edge or depth of the nightmare in which bright day is eclipsed by fear of itself and I forget— for how am I to *see* the light?